


It All Started In Art

by dnlndphl (hma1313)



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-06
Updated: 2015-12-06
Packaged: 2018-05-05 07:26:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,085
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5366426
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hma1313/pseuds/dnlndphl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dan didn’t believe in love at first sight.<br/>Then Phil walked into his art class at the start of Year 10, and everything changed.</p>
            </blockquote>





	It All Started In Art

**Author's Note:**

> This has been sat unfinished on my laptop for nearly seven months so I thought I'd finally write the ending and share it with you all. I hope you enjoy it!

As with every lesson since the start of the year, Dan’s first art class consisted of being put into a seating plan next to someone he undoubtedly didn’t like, and the fifty minute lecture on “what you’re going to be doing in this class and how important your GCSEs are for the rest of your life”. Dan was seated on a table with a girl he knew from a couple of classes last year and two other guys he didn’t know. It could have been worse, he supposed, as he sat fiddling with his sketchbook and looking up at the clock at thirty second intervals to see if it was time for lunch, glancing over a group of popular guys who had somehow persuaded the teacher that it was a good idea for them to all sit on the same table.

The teacher took the register, Dan mumbling a reply when she called his name. He only knew a handful of people in this class, as everyone got mixed up and put in classes with people they’d only ever seen passing in the corridors or in assembly depending on what options they took.

There was a new boy, with black hair and blue eyes and an accent Dan hadn’t really heard before, but he guessed it was from somewhere up north. He was called Phil, and there was just something about him that made Dan want to get to know him.

He was also very attractive.

Dan hadn’t really accepted that he was into guys. He was still half convinced it was a phase. So when he saw Phil and the first thought that came into his head was how attractive he was and how much he wanted to get with him, Dan pushed that thought far from his mind and tried to concentrate on whatever it was that the teacher was saying.

It didn’t work, and Dan found himself looking up at Phil whatever chance he got.

* * *

Sadly, Phil wasn’t in any of his other classes, so the only time that Dan got to see him was in those treasured five hours every two weeks in the art room. They were sort of friends now, as their art class was quite small and had inadvertently split itself into ‘the populars’ and ‘the rest’, so they ended up talking sometimes if they were at the sinks at the same time or getting paints out and fighting for the decent paint brushes.

Dan was falling for Phil, hard, and he didn’t know what to do about it.

* * *

They got a new seating plan after Christmas, and Dan was seated next to Phil with no one else on their row. Dan had managed over the break to bury his feelings for Phil deep, deep down inside of him, so he could totally deal with sitting next to him.

Totally.

* * *

Dan liked to watch Phil draw. Phil was talented, and watching him draw was mesmerising. When Dan could draw something and it look vaguely okay, Phil could draw the same thing and make it look so much better. He envied Phil at times when he was flipping through his sketchbook. Dan was talented himself, but he never liked to think too highly of his abilities; because as far as he was concerned, getting a good grade in an Art GCSE didn’t mean you were likely to be having your own galleries at any point in the future.

Phil didn’t have confidence in his abilities, though, and seemed to rely on him for advice, and sometimes it seemed like not a lesson would go by without Phil asking him something.

“Have I got enough water on my brush?”

“Do you think Miss would let me take some acrylics home to practice?”

“Where are the watercolours kept again?”

“Can you cut this piece of paper down for me?”

“Dan, what type of paint should I do this in?”

Dan didn’t mind the questions, though, mostly because Phil never asked anyone else – it was always Dan Phil went to.

* * *

At the end of Year 10, Dan got a girlfriend.

He didn’t even know where it came from. He’d sort of accepted that he liked guys now, but even after that revelation, he somehow found himself asking a girl out. Her name was Rosie and he’d hated when he’d first met her in Year 8, but they’d sort of grown closer over the course of the year, and on the last day of Year 10, he suddenly had a girlfriend, and he didn’t know how to feel about that.

* * *

He and Rosie met up a few times over the summer holidays, spending the days at the park acting all cute and cuddly. When he kissed her for the first time, he couldn’t help but think what it would have been like if it was Phil, and Dan hated himself for it.

* * *

At some point during the first half term of Year 11, Dan found himself going down town at lunch with Rosie on one side of him and Phil on the other. It was a lunch break between a double art lesson, and Phil hadn’t had any other friends to go downtown with, so he’d ended up tagging along with Dan and Rosie.

Phil got a nosebleed on the way back from town, and it was Dan who supplied the tissues and went with him to the nurse when they got back to school while Rosie stood around like the awkward third wheel.

* * *

He and Rosie were together for three months before they split up. Everyone thought they were a cute couple and if they hadn’t broken up, they would have been ‘cutest couple’ in the school yearbook.

Dan broke up with Rosie, because he couldn’t keep kidding himself anymore. How they lasted three months, Dan didn’t know, but he had a feeling it had something to do with their mutual obsession with My Chemical Romance and Fall Out Boy.

During October half term, Dan went to Disneyland Paris with school, and it was on this trip that he met a girl in the year below, Anna. He and Anna became crazily close during the four day trip, holding hands round Disneyland and sitting next to each other on the coach home for the entire twelve hour journey. It was on said trip that he made the decision to break up with Rosie, and as soon as they were back at school, that was exactly what he did.

“It’s okay, I get what you’re trying to say,” Rosie said with a sad smile as Dan had stumbled through his break up speech. “See you around, yeah?”

Then Anna had asked him out a week later and everything Dan he thought he was going to do with this year went out the window.

* * *

He and Anna didn’t last long. It wasn’t surprising, really. They were totally different and the closest they got to a ‘date’ was Anna’s mum taking them to see the latest Marvel film and sitting with them in the cinema. They latest about three weeks before Dan broke up with her, and when he did, it was a relief.

* * *

Dan didn’t date anyone else after that. He tried to focus on his schoolwork instead and started to look round various sixth forms, even though he knew he’d end up staying at the school he was currently at because it would be easier than getting up at 6am to go to a sixth form college in the nearest city.

He’d already decided on doing art for A Level, as had Phil. They were currently working on their last project before their art exam, Cultures. Dan was doing India as he’d been there on holiday with his family and Phil was doing Japan as he’d always wanted to go there. As Dan spent hours painstakingly inking henna patterns into the silhouette of a Hindu god, splashing watercolour around the outside to give the effect of Holi, the festival of colour, Phil painted a beautiful watercolour of a Japanese landscape complete with cherry blossom trees in the foreground and mountains in the background.

“Maybe we’ll go there someday,” Phil joked one lesson.

“Yeah,” Dan replied, daydreaming of wandering around Tokyo had in hand with Phil, posing for photographs underneath the cherry blossoms. “Maybe we will.”

* * *

Year 11 ended almost as soon as it had started, and Dan got tonsillitis in the middle of sitting his GCSEs, causing his grades to suffer as he didn’t feel like doing revision. When they got they got their results in August, Art was his only A grade.

* * *

Year 12 was the year that Dan came out.

He hadn’t really planned it. He was sitting in AS art, struggling to use a ruler, and complained about it the only two people sitting on the same table as him, his best friend PJ and Phil.

“Urgh, I’m not _straight_ ,” he whined, throwing the ruler across the desk in a tantrum before releasing what he’d said. “I mean the line – the ruler – not straight – you know what I mean.”

“Okay,” PJ said with a smirk and raised eyebrows. “Whatever you say.”

Throughout the whole thing, Phil remained silent.

* * *

Dan started dreaming about Phil. He’d dream about them doing cute stuff together and wake up smiling, but he’d also dream about them having sex and wake up with a raging boner and feeling like a thirteen year old boy who’d just discovered porn for the first time.

As the dreams got more frequent, and any daydreaming about the future involved Phil in some way, shape or form, Dan realised that he was well and truly in love with Phil Lester.

He was fucked.

* * *

Valentine’s day came, and Dan seriously debated sending Phil a card, before deciding against it. They had nine hours together in the art room every two weeks now, as well as free periods at the same time, and it was way too fucking cliché to ask someone out on Valentine’s day. So Dan didn’t bother, but then he, Phil and PJ spent their art lesson making cards out of paper for each other and writing stupid puns in them. What Phil probably didn’t realise was that Dan meant every single word that he’d written in his card to Phil.

* * *

Towns and Cities was the topic Dan and Phil chose to do their Year 12 art exam on. They needed to take photographs to work from for sketchbook work, and it made sense for them to go together.

“Do you want to go out sometime?” Phil asked in the middle of one art lesson. “To take photos, I mean,” he added quickly, his cheeks blushing scarlet and his mouth in an awkward smile. “That came out wrong.”

“Yeah, we could go and take photos sometime,” Dan replied. On the other side of him, PJ shook his head and relentlessly teased the two of them about the whole ‘Phil asking Dan out’ thing, dropping in into conversations weeks after it had happened.

* * *

The day came. They’d arranged to meet at the town train station, getting the 10.16 to the nearest city. Phil had messaged Dan the previous day, wondering if his friend Chris could come along as he had nothing else to that day. Dan had reluctantly agreed, and now it was 10.10 and he was standing on the train station, shivering and wishing Phil would get here already.

He felt his phone ring in his pocket, and he pulled it out to see Phil’s name on screen.

“Hey,” Phil said on the other end of the line. “Chris isn’t coming, he didn’t have the money for the train fare. Can you get tickets for us please?”

“Yeah, sure,” Dan replied, walking over to the ticket machine. “How long are you going to be?”

“Like five minutes, I’m walking past Smith’s right now. See you soon, yeah?”

“Yeah, see you soon.” Dan struggled with the ticket machine, eventually managing to get two returns after feeding a £20 note into the death trap that was the money slot. Gathering up the change and stuffing it in his pocket, he took the tickets and was checking them just as Phil walked onto the platform.

“Hi.” Phil’s smile seemed to brighten the dull, rainy day and Dan forced himself into polite act-like-a-friend mode as they waited for the train, whilst at the same time the mantra of notadatenotadatenotadate flowing through his head at breakneck speed.

This was going to be a long day.

* * *

They didn’t take that many photos in the end, as it rained for the majority of the day. Dan spent way too much on clothes and bought art supplies he didn’t need and Phil was pleased to add socks patterned with turtles and unicorns to his collection.

They’d braved the wetness of the streets and gone out of the shopping centre, looking for somewhere to eat. They ended up buying lunch at a Tesco’s Local, Dan deciding to splurge out on white chocolate chip cookies and getting annoyed at the self-service checkouts. As they were leaving the store and Dan was too occupied in his own thoughts thinking about what it would be like to kiss Phil in the rain, Dan walked straight into an old lady on a motorised scooter, despite Phil’s desperate shouts of “Dan!” and trying to hold him back.

“Oh my god I am so sorry,” Dan said as he picked himself up off the ground. The knees of his jeans were wet, and Dan knew they were going to take an age to dry in this shitty weather. “Are you okay?”

“Never mind me, are you okay?”

Dan stood there apologising profusely for five more minutes until Phil dragged him away, muttering something about needing to go back to the shopping centre so they could eat their lunches. On the train home, Dan sat there across the table from Phil and wondered what would happen if he reached out, took his hand and confessed his feelings. He didn’t do it, of course, because that would be stupid and reckless the almost empty carriage with the creepy guy across the aisle was not the place for what would be an awkward conversation, whatever the outcome.

* * *

The end of Year 12 came at the beginning of May, and the last week of term was spent desperately trying to finish sketchbook work and putting up their work for the exhibition. Dan spent hours with the staple gun and hammering nails in the walls, daydreaming about what it would be like to have his own art studio with Phil one day.

* * *

Study leave was only four weeks long and Dan had his three exams in the space of two weeks, leaving him with a fortnight of absolutely nothing before everyone had to go back to school to start Year 13. Phil didn’t have that luxury, as he’d taken Maths and Biology for some unknown reason Dan didn’t understand, and therefore had exams both before and after half term. They texted each other, moaning about how revision sucked and how they’d never get all this done in time. Dan’s English Literature exam was the first one he had, and as he walked away from the exam hall, he felt like he’d finally made his mind up on what he wanted to study at university.

* * *

The five weeks back in the summer term were mostly composed of ‘this is what you’ll be doing in Year 13’, countless visits to university open days and trying to write personal statements. Dan had decided he wanted to study English Literature, and really wanted to study at the University of East Anglia, but had also made his mind up on Manchester University and York University being his back-ups. Phil was still undecided, a lot of it riding on his AS results, but Dan knew that Phil would probably go to college and do a Foundation Degree in art before going on to specialise at university.

When they got their results in August, Dan got a C in Art. English Literature was his only A grade.

* * *

Summer was a blur, Dan spending a week in Switzerland and two weeks in the Lake District, all contact with the outside world lost. When he got back and charged his phone, Dan found countless texts and missed calls from Phil.

_Dannnn I miss you_

_Can we meet up sometime?_

_I really want to talk to you_

_Dan answer your phone!_

_DAN_

_I miss you._

* * *

They met at the park in town two days before school started, sharing a box of ice lollies and enjoying the rest of the summer sun. Phil was fidgeting, constantly rearranging his fringe and pulling at the sleeves of his shirt.

“Right, spit it out,” Dan said after five agonising minutes of silence only interrupted by the kids in the play park a hundred feet away and the slurping of ice lollies. “What is it?”

“I…um…I don’t know how to say this, Dan.”

“Well you can try. I’m listening.”

They lapsed into a silence again, and then Phil spoke.

“I think I’m in love with you,” he blurted. “I know that’s probably a stupid thing to say and you don’t even like me like that but I just had to tell you because I can’t keep lying to myself any longer, Dan, I just can’t –”

“Phil.”

“- you’re all I can think about, every minute of every day, every day of every week, and it’s killing me, it really is –”

“Phil!”

Phil stopped talking and looked at Dan. “Hey,” Dan said, taking one of Phil’s hands in his own, “it’s okay. I get it, I do.”

“No you don’t! You don’t know how I feel!” Phil tore his hand away from Dan’s, folding his arms and moving away. “You don’t understand how I feel. You haven’t got a clue.”

“That’s bullshit, Phil,” Dan said. “And I think you know that just as well as I do. I’m in love with you too, alright? I’ve been in love with you ever since I first saw you in art way back in Year 10 and I’m in love with now. So I think it’s fair to say to say I know how you feel.”

A smile made its way onto Phil’s lips, spreading across his face and lighting up his eyes.

“You really mean that?”

“Yeah,” Dan said, shuffling towards Phil and pulling him into an awkward, but nonetheless loving, first kiss. “I do.”

**Author's Note:**

> hang out with me on [tumblr](http://pllsetskyonice.tumblr.com/) for a questionable mix of fandoms and ships


End file.
